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| For more information read Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity by Jamshid Gharajedaghi, 1999. |
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In order to be an effective teacher one must be able to reach a level of understanding through continual learning. In order to do so one must learn "why students do what they do." Any fan in the stands can see that the player missed the jump shot and can quickly identify a myriad of reasons why without ever understanding. This is because our cultural assumption about how to learn is anchored in analysis—taking things apart to understand the whole. As a result, you'll hear things like: "He missed the shot because he didn't follow through." "He missed because he hurried the shot." "He missed because he didn't concentrate." All examples of analyzing. Analyzing is a great way to know but an insufficient method to reach understanding. Assume any or all of the above observations are true. What have we learned? We know how the shot was missed but do we know why? We can't possibly know by analyzing the shot. In order to understand, we must move to synthesis thinking. Synthesis requires that we look outward to the larger context to see the actor in the context of the work. How does this player interact with his environment? In looking outward we might discover that the player feels extra pressure tonight because the leading scorer is injured and the score is close and he took the shot when he realized that the shot clock was down to two. Without synthetic thinking we would never understand why he missed the shot, only how he missed it.
What does this mean for the teacher in the classroom? It isn't good enough to just know "how" the student scored on a quiz or test but "why." Discovering why takes much more depth and serious thinking than a score or grade can provide. The great news is that the teacher has incredible power—a power greater than the most powerful CEO's. Gharajedaghi, quoting Boulding, defines power as "the amount of change created in a future state as a result by a decision." (Gharajedaghi, pg. 37) Teachers hold tremendous power to do just that. |
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